Roosevelt, Franklin D., and National Policy

Thirty-second president of the United States (1933–1945), who served longer than any U.S. president and presided over a period that included the Great Depression and World War II. The policies and decisions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) had an enormous impact on the future of the United States, both domestically and internationally, and thereby forever affected its national security policies.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's views of national security changed significantly over the course of his four terms in office. Domestic economic difficulties were the most serious threat facing the nation when Roosevelt was first elected in 1932. This led him to focus on U.S. domestic problems and to avoid entanglement in European disputes that were threatening to lead to war. By the start of his fourth term, however, Roosevelt was one of the principal leaders of the Allied forces fighting Nazi Germany. During his presidency, Roosevelt thus was forced to move from a philosophy of defense to one of offense to respond to Japanese and German aggression.

When Roosevelt became president in 1933, U.S. foreign policy was one of isolationism. At that time, the United States perceived no significant foreign threats to its security. The armed forces of France and Great [Page 636]Britain, and the intervening Atlantic Ocean, seemed to isolate the United States from Germany. Although Japan was considered a dangerous rival, it was occupied with a land war in China. In addition, Japan's limited access to important military resources, such as oil and rubber, checked its expansionist tendencies. The Soviet Union, although it was an ideological opponent, was not a serious military rival and was more concerned with internal matters than with foreign policy.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference (1945), flanked by British prime minister Winston Churchill and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin.

Library of Congress.

Roosevelt's primary challenge when elected in his first term was to lead the country to economic recovery from the depths of the Great Depression. A stock market crash in 1929 caused widespread bank failures in the early 1930s. Countless families lost their savings, and thousands of businesses went bankrupt, throwing millions of Americans out of work. When Roosevelt was elected, one out of every four Americans was unemployed. During his first two terms in office, Roosevelt refused to become deeply involved in the European affairs, despite increasing pleas from France and Great Britain.

With the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1939, Roosevelt decided to walk a fine line between isolationism and interventionism. He made it clear that the United States would help the European democracies by providing arms through the so-called cash and carry program, but the nation was not prepared to commit troops or declare war on the Axis powers. At the same time, however, Roosevelt took steps to prepare the country for the possibility of war. After the German conquest of France in 1940, he increased the size of the U.S. Army to 375,000 troops because of German progress in Europe. The year before, he launched the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon in response to warnings that the Germans were working on such a device.

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